The last time the Catholic Church had a Pope Leo, the workers of the world were uniting in response to the second Industrial Revolution. European and American sons of farmers were moving to cities and becoming factory workers, upending lives and communities across Europe and the United States.

In response, Pope Leo XIII in 1891 published an encyclical (a letter to all bishops around the world) titled Rerum Novarum that addressed the rights of the working man and the dangers of both industrial capitalism and socialism.

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Today we have Pope Leo XIV, and we can only guess how he will govern the church. But likely it tells us something that he has chosen as his namesake the pope who first laid out Catholic Social Teaching. (Of course we cannot rule out that his name is a nod to one of the first 12 Leos, including Leo the Great who saved Rome in the 5th century.)

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), a liberal Catholic, noted in her brief comment on the new pope: “For many of us, the name Leo XIV happily brings to mind Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum which was a blessing for working people.”

Leo XIII indeed dedicated the heart of the encyclical to defending the rights of workers and emphasizing the importance of unions. He warned of the excesses of industrial capitalism, but the encyclical was also an important pushback against socialism.

When considering the meaning of Leo XIV’s namesake, it’s crucial to remember that Leo XIII was a Catholic pope and not a European or American politician, and that Rerum Novarum was not a political document. It was, instead, a church document that should be understood as more than a critique of capitalism and socialism. It is a reflection on what human beings are, and thus how we ought to relate to our work and to one another.

Revolutions

In the late 19th century, factories were replacing smaller workshops, and urban living and wage labor were replacing the agricultural life. These shifts brought new freedoms and economic growth, and they also brought new degradations and threats.

Larger employers meant more concentration of economic power. Capital, one could say, gained power vis-a-vis labor. This inevitably led to exploitation, and life in crowded and not-quite-modern cities presented new indignities.

In response, socialism crept throughout Europe. Socialist parties were gaining support in many countries, and socialist economics was gaining purchase in the academic world.

Socialists didn’t merely propose high tax rates and expansive government safety nets, they demanded revolution — just as modern economics had created its own industrial revolution. In the context of these two revolutions, Pope Leo wrote of “the spirit of revolutionary change, which has long been disturbing the nations of the world….”

“The elements of the conflict now raging are unmistakable, in the vast expansion of industrial pursuits and the marvelous discoveries of science; in the changed relations between masters and workmen; in the enormous fortunes of some few individuals, and the utter poverty of the masses; the increased self-reliance and closer mutual combination of the working classes; as also, finally, in the prevailing moral degeneracy.”

Rerum Novarum was a timely warning about the excesses both of industrial capitalism and socialism.

Leo XIII lamented “that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition.”

He also decried socialism as incapable of curing the working man’s suffering, and also “emphatically unjust” for destroying the natural right of humans to own property.

But those who have much property have a moral duty to share it, Leo argued, citing the Gospel and the writings of church fathers. “When what necessity demands has been supplied, and one’s standing fairly taken thought for, it becomes a duty to give to the indigent out of what remains over.”

Leo defended market wages, but also articulated a moral duty to pay a fair wage.

“Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner.”

Thus it would be wrong for either the free-marketeers or the socialists to claim Pope Leo XIII as their own. His economic teaching, if summed up in modern terms, might be best summed up by a children’s song that suggests both property rights and the duty to share:

It’s mine but you can have some
With you I’d like to share it
‘Cause if I share it with you
You’ll have some too.

And just as these economic teachings shouldn’t be thought of as Left or Right, Rerum Novarum, Catholic Social Teaching, and the message of Pope Leo XIII shouldn’t be thought of as mostly economic.

Leo XIII was articulating an anthropology, and his arguments on economic issues were grounded in a particular understanding of the human person. His attack on greed and unrestrained capitalism was ultimately a moral and personal argument. The chief villains in Rerum Novarum were those “who use human beings as mere instruments for money-making.”

Humans can never be mere instruments, and human life can never be merely transactional. This is perhaps the argument today’s society needs most.

Family and society

Leo XIII argued against the too-individualistic view of the person implied by modern capitalism, but also embraced by today’s feminism. If our major newspaper columnists today engaged Rerum Novarum, they would attack it for perpetuating the patriarchy. Leo’s idea of just wages clearly rested on the image of the male breadwinner. Employers, he said, have a duty to pay their workers enough to support the whole family.

More broadly, family sits at the center of the good life as portrayed by Leo, and the family is prior to the state and must be free from interference by the state. Likewise, property rights belong not only to the individual, but to the family.

This is where Pope Leo’s argument expands to articulate a view of human nature that can serve as a much-needed antidote to what plagues Europe and the U.S. today — an overly individualistic atomized view of humans.

Man is a relational creature. Leo pointed to the “natural impulse” for man to come together “in civil society” and “join together in associations.”

Leo defended not only public associations — those open to all and oriented to the benefit of all — but also private associations, like clubs, labor unions, and religious organizations. The government, Leo notes, often tries to smash private societies — and this is evil.

“To enter into a ‘society’ of this kind is the natural right of man; and the State has for its office to protect natural rights, not to destroy them….”

Leo wrote, “All such societies, being free to exist, have the further right to adopt such rules and organization as may best conduce to the attainment of their respective objects.”

VATICAN UNVEILS POPE LEO’S COAT OF ARMS AND PORTRAIT

Yes, workers have a right to form labor unions, but this is just an instance of the human right — and need — to voluntarily come together in little platoons. We need to be understood not as autonomous economic actors, but as participants in a complex web of civil society and private associations.

This relational — not merely transactional — understanding of mankind was crucial to emphasize in the late 19th century, and it is just as needed today.